Sager NP5793 Review

by Charles P. Jefferies

The Sager NP5793 is a sleek 17-inch gaming machine designed for extreme performance. It can be configured with the most powerful and bleeding-edge components available on the notebook market, including the Nvidia GeForce 8800M-GTX and Intel Core 2 Extreme processor.

Before we start the review, I would like to give a special thanks to Donald Stratton at PowerNotebooks.com, who arranged for this unit to be sent to us.

Our test unit is configured as follows:

• Screen: 17-inch WUXGA (1920x1200) glossy widescreen
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2.8GHz/6MB L2 cache/800MHz FSB) - 45nm Penryn
• Video card: Nvidia GeForce 8800M-GTX 512MB
• RAM: 4GB DDR2-667
• Hard Drive: 160GB 7200RPM Seagate Momentus 7200.2 SATA
• Optical Drive: 8X DVD Burner
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
• Wireless: Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4956AGN and Internal Bluetooth
• Battery: 8-cell Li-ion

Reasons to Buy

The Sager NP5793 is aimed squarely at gamers. It has the performance desired to play the latest games at high settings and sleek looks to match its performance. The NP5793 is one of the more reasonably-priced gaming notebooks on the market - a balanced configuration can be easily had for less than $2,500. The NP5793's main competitors at the time of writing this review are the Toshiba Satellite X205 series, Dell XPS M1730, and the Alienware Area-51 m15x. Both the X205 and M1730 are dual video card capable machines. However, even dual 8700M-GT cards in SLI cannot match the single 8800M-GTX in our test unit as I will prove in this review. The Alienware is available with the same components as the Sager but at a significantly higher price.

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Build & Design

The Sager NP5793 does not follow the glossy plastic trend of the mainstream notebook market. Instead, it has a more understated look, encased in smooth matte black plastic. Around the base of the unit is a thin border of orange, giving the NP5793 a sophisticated look. The keyboard and touchpad area are surrounded by a carbon fiber-like border, which appears to blend in from a distance but up close is quite detailed. The back of the NP5793's lid is covered almost entirely in black brushed aluminum, which adds a degree of protection and durability. At the very top of the lid is a thin strip of glossy plastic, yet another design detail. A thin border surrounding the screen is of the same material.

The NP5793 has a squared-off shape unlike the soft corners that have become prominent in the mainstream notebook market. It gives the machine an aggressive, bold stance. The base of the notebook is chiseled inward, making the NP5793 look and feel slimmer than it really is.

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The quality of the materials used in the construction is top-notch. The matte black plastics used on the base of the notebook are thick and inflexible. They are smooth but not slick to the touch. The hinges are rock-solid and hold the large 17-inch widescreen display in place with authority. The display is resistant to twisting and flexing; the NP5793 has one of the least-flexible displays I have seen on a 17-inch notebook. The back of the screen is well-protected as I mentioned earlier; I was unable to get ripples to show on the screen by applying pressure on the back. The base of the unit uses thinner, granular plastic but it is still of good quality and does not undermine the strength of the unit. The base of the machine is extremely rigid.

The Sager NP5793 is one of the best-built notebooks on the market without a doubt - it matches up and even surpasses many high-end business notebooks in the build quality aspect. Thanks to its understated looks and durability, the NP5793 is at home at a LAN parties and offices alike.

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Processor and Performance

The NP5793 is of course intended as notebook that will outperform your average mainstream notebook. To see a full set of benchmarks and gaming experience for the NP5793 we've broken the results out into a separate page that can be found here:

Sager NP5793 Benchmarks and Gaming Performance

Screen

There are two screens available on the NP5793, a matte WSXGA+ (1680x1050) model and a glossy WUXGA (1920x1200) model; our test unit has the latter. If I did not say this is one of the best-looking displays I have seen on a 17-inch notebook, I would be lying. Contrast is excellent - blacks are deep and whites are stark - and the brightness level is high as well, noticeably more so than my HP w2207 desktop monitor. There is no noticeable light leakage, even against a black screen. There is also no graniness. Side-to-side viewing angles are excellent, as there is very little color distortion. While gaming, I noticed no ghosting. Vertical viewing angles do leave room for improvement though, as colors get too dark from below and too washed out from above. This is common among LCD displays though. Overall, the 17-inch WUXGA display is gorgeous and fitting for a high-end notebook like the NP5793.

Speakers

There are two stereo speakers on the NP5793. They are located at opposite ends of the rear of the chassis, on the sides and next to the display hinges. I found the odd placement made surround sound from two speakers more believable. The speakers are small and borderline tinny; I am neither impressed nor disappointed with them. The sound is detailed (I could hear picks hitting guitar strings and bullet casings hitting the ground) but volume is limited and bass response is nil. Treble (voices) is measurable but again, nothing special. The two speakers are adequate for music although I highly recommend a good pair of external speakers or headphones to make for the best sound experience. These speakers are much better for games than music.

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Heat & Noise

The NP5793 has a revised cooling system to handle the Core 2 Extreme processor and Nvidia 8800M-GTX graphics card. There are two powerful fans in the base of the notebook: one cools the processor and the other the video card. The vents on the back of the notebook are large and reach more than one-third of the way across. The copper heatsinks are clearly visible inside. Much of the bottom of the notebook, especially the area on the right toward the front, is perforated with holes to let air in.

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I found that the NP5793's cooling system functioned exceptionally well. Even after hours of playing Crysis at full settings, the machine barely felt warm. The entire chassis was either room temperature or lukewarm to the touch. Needless to say I am more than impressed. Sager thoughtfully released an update for the NP5793 that allows for the fans to be user-controlled. Pressing Function + 1 puts the fans at full speed and Function + 3 at mid-speed (the fans will speed up if needed, then go back down to medium). I found that the mid-speed worked best because that way the fans were not constantly spinning up and down every minute. That brings me to the complaints I have about the cooling system. While I said it functioned well - which it does, the notebook has no problems keeping cool - it has a lot of room for improvement in the acoustics area. The cooling system can be described with one word - loud. The NP5793 has one of the loudest cooling systems I have heard on a notebook. At low speed/idle, the noise level is audible but acceptable. However, once an application is started that uses the processor and/or graphics card, the noise level increases substantially, and the machine can be heard across a decent-sized room. Our test unit had a defect with the cooling system, which we determined was a bad bearing on the CPU fan. It made a grinding noise, like the fan was hitting something. The noise was most annoying but fortunately this is the only case I have heard of this happening. None of the other NP5792/NP5793 owners have reported such problems in our Sager forum.

Overall, while the cooling system does an excellent job of keeping the NP5793's heat under control, there is no free lunch here - this notebook is loud.

Keyboard

The Sager NP5793 has a full size keyboard with a numeric keypad. This keyboard is fantastic because it excels in a number of ways. For starters, there is no flex, even at the corners and in the middle. The keyboard keys have a slightly rubbery feel and sound and provide resistance all the way down. The way this keyboard responds is pleasing and enjoyable.

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With many notebook brands, I notice that the keyboard keys have been made out of thinner and thinner plastic over the years. I have yet to see this trend on a Sager notebook - the keys are made of thick plastic and feel high quality. However, I have two qualms with this particular keyboard. For starters, there are no dedicated home, page up, page down, nor end keys. Instead, they are integrated as secondary functions into the arrow keys and the Function key must be pressed to utilize them. I find this setup awkward and annoying because I frequently use those keys. If the number lock is turned off, then the 1, 3, 7 and 9 keys become the end, page down, home and page up keys respectively. Regardless, it is still an odd setup. My second qualm with the keyboard is the three column number pad. A normal number pad has four columns. Fortunately this number pad still has the same 17 keys a normal number pad has. The layout simply takes time to adjust to.

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Touchpad

The NP5791's touchpad is offset to the left as it is with most 17-inch notebooks so it aligns with the center of the keyboard. I usually do not have a lot to say about the touchpad but this one is most enjoyable to use. It has a textured feel but it is smooth at the same time; in other words, just the right amount of texture to provide feedback. A column on the right side is dedicated to scrolling. The touchpad buttons are pleasing to use; they are made out of the same matte black plastic as the palmrest and surrounding area and push down with a quiet and satisfying click. They feel solid. In between the two buttons is the fingerprint reader which can be used to log into Windows and remember passwords for various applications, including Internet webpages.

Input & Output Ports

All descriptions are from left to right.

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Left side:

1. Speaker
2. Kensington lock slot
3. Optical drive

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Right side:

1. ExpressCard/54 slot
2. Memory card reader
3. 2x USB 2.0
4. IEEE 1394 mini-Firewire
5. 56k modem jack
6. Ethernet
7. Coaxial connection (enabled with TV tuner)
8. Speaker

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Front:

1. SPDIF
2. Headphone jack
3. Microphone jack
4. Line In
5. Status lights

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Back:

1. Vents
2. S-video out
3. DVI-D
4. 2x USB 2.0
5. Power connection
6. Serial port

Wireless

The NP5793 accepts a mini-PCI express wireless card; ours came with the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN supporting 802.11a, b, g, and n wireless formats. I had no trouble connecting and maintaining connections to various secured wireless connections. It picked up many wireless connections that my old Sager NP5320 did not see at all.

Internal Bluetooth wireless also came with our test unit. I did not test it but I expect it would function as expected.

Battery

With the 8-cell battery, Windows presented me with the 10% left warning after surfing the Internet for 2 hours. I had the brightness on level 3 out of 7 (7 being the highest) and wireless on the entire time. Although 2 hours does not seem like a lot, for a notebook able to outperform many high performance desktops the results are more than acceptable. Remember that this particular NP5793 is equipped with the power-hungry Core 2 Extreme processor and Nvidia 8800M-GTX 512MB video card. The relatively long battery time is an unexpected bonus with this machine. For comparison, a previous Sager NP5791 I tested with the same battery but a more battery-friendly Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz processor and 8700M-GT 512MB graphics card managed 2 hours and 40 minutes of life. With a non-Extreme processor, I imagine the battery life of the NP5793 will be improved but by how much I cannot say.

Operating System & Software

Our Sager NP5793 came pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. It is available with all versions of Vista save for Home Basic (which would be out of place on such a high-end machine anyway), and Windows XP. By default, Sager does not include an operating system. I did not have any issues with Vista on this machine, but on battery the machine felt sluggish - it was like the machine did not want to do what I was doing. I eventually isolated the issue to the graphics card - there must be some power saving setting that underclocks the graphics card too much. Even scrolling through web pages and minimizing/maximizing applications were sluggish. I believe this is not a problem with Vista nor the notebook itself, but rather an Nvidia driver issue. Hopefully with updated drivers, this will no longer be a problem.

Sager, unlike many mainstream brands, does not install a single bit of bloatware on their machines, so there is still hope. The only pre-installed software consists of Nero 7 OEM, Bison Cam web camera application, and the fingerprint reader software.

Customer Support

During my time with the NP5793 I did not have to contact customer support. However, I currently own a Sager notebook and I have experience with support - one time I sent an email asking for a BIOS update for it and they got back to me within an hour. The email was answered by a real person and not a machine.

All Sager computers are backed with lifetime technical support. Sager's support website has a variety of tech support options. Drivers can be downloaded from there as well for both past and present notebooks.

Through PowerNotebooks.com, customers are provided with domestic 24/7 tech support. I contacted PowerNotebooks' technical support once with my Sager and I was very pleased with the support - my call was answered immediately by a real person, no prompts. My question was answered in short order.

Conclusion

The Sager NP5793 is tough to beat as a single-GPU 17-inch notebook. It has superb gaming performance, a gorgeous widescreen display, rock solid quality, and top-notch input devices. Decent battery life is icing on the cake. The NP5793's main downside is the loud cooling system, and without a doubt it will affect buying decisions. Starting at a shade over $2,000 with the 8800M-GTX as of writing, the pricing is more than reasonable for such performance. Sager continues to set the gold standard for gaming notebooks and this notebook is well worth a look for those in the market.

Pros:

• Desktop performance in a portable package
• Runs cool
• Gorgeous widescreen display
• Top notch build quality
• Sleek looks
• Available with Windows XP
• Reasonable battery life

Cons:

• Very loud cooling system
• Odd keyboard/number pad layout
• Feels sluggish on battery (Nvidia issue)
• Competing notebooks offer two internal hard drives

 

This is how people should make reviews.
And yes, this is a great notebook for the money you pay. Even without thinking about the price tag, it's right there at the top.

 

thanks for your effort chaz, great review and really great results!

 

Such a beast !!!! I really want to how Alienware will catch up with this.

 

Nice review Chaz! Nice benchmarks.

 

very nice machine.

 

Another great Chaz review. I like the attention to detail in this review.

This machine appears to be all raw power with no finess. I've owned a Sager before (back in '96) and it turned out to be fairly reliable, electronics-wise. Build quality was on the low side. Nice to see Sager build quality come up.

What would keep me from buying this unit is the fan noise, weird keyboard layout, mediocre sound given the machine's intended purpose, and lack of HDMI.

 

Chaz,

Thanks for the 8800m benchmarks.

If you have time, could you take some screenshots of Crysis or UT3 or CoD4 at native resolution, lower resolution scaled up, and lower resolution with black borders?

I realize this is a 17" laptop, but if you posted one of each of those pics in the 1920x1200 vs 1440x900 (or 1680x1050) threads, it might help people make a more informed decision when choosing screen resolution for their laptop.

Ideally, it would be a somewhat similar scene, but it could be anything just to see what the scaled quality is like vs native resolution.

Just an idea...

 

Very very nice review Chaz. I bet you love gaming on this beast of a machine. COD4 looks great.

 

10.000 3dmark06? CoD4 on 1920x1200 with highest details?

Notebooks for ever!

Thanks for the great review Chaz, you never disappoint us.

 

Nice review, nice machine, nice perfomance.

 

Great review. I now know I made the right decision in ordering Rocks version of the NP5793 with the T9500 CPU. Hopefully the battery life in mine will last a bit longer than 2 hours.

 

Thanks to all for the awesome comments, they made my day.

The performance and overall build/design of this machine are simply top notch. Call of Duty 4 was a joy to play - I was amazed that it could do 1920x1200 with 4X AA and be completely playable. I thought I was playing it without AA - usually the framerates drop substantially at such high resolutions with it applied. The NP5793 is quite the performer indeed. I will miss this machine dearly. :cry:

 

BTW, how is one able to get a machine sent to them for benchmarking? Haha, just curious.

 

They work at review sites...

 

Em, noone else seems to have noticed this....I don't know, is the 5793 a model that's not out yet, because the NP5793 comes with the 8800M GTX from say Xoticpc, but it can only have up to the T9500 2.6GHz processor, yet you have it listed as the X9000 Extreme 2.8GHz, is that a typo or something?

 

The Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 is a very real processor, notice that this is an Engineering Sample (ES) from the CPU-Z screenshot. I recommend calling a reseller or Sager if you are interested in it, I don't know when it will be offered nor its upgrade pricing. Intel Extreme X9000 processors are $851 per chip (in batches of 1,000, so expect to pay more) according to Intel:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4129
The X9000 differs from the standard Core 2 Duo mobile processors because it has an unlocked multiplier and also a much higher TDP (44W vs. 35W). The Sager NP5793 has a beefed up heatsink to handle the Extreme. Since it has an unlocked multiplier, it can be overclocked. Sager provides an option to overclock the processor to 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz; I have seen some nice gains thus far with overclocking.

Stay tuned for the overclocking analysis article.

 

What happened to the benchmarks?

 

Yea, but the T9500 is the highest one that is offered, that's really strange. I didn't know that the motherboard could support it, I thought it only supported the Penryn and Santa Rosa st uff, would this be possible to upg to ?

 

According to a report I read recently, the X9000 is being released mid-February. I imagine companies will start to offer it then.
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5578&Itemid=35

 

Whoa, am I the only one to notice...

...51C temp of the HDD?! That's really high, considering my Seagate never gets beyond 42C [although it's the 5400 RPM one]. Or is HD Tune just wrong?

 

Nope, it's correct. 51*C is not out of the ordinary for a laptop in my experience, note this after doing the HDTune benchmark so it is maybe 2*C higher than normal. I do agree it is high but not dangerous.

 

For a laptop CPU or GPU, yes. But for a hard drive, it seems rare, if not anomalous.

Last hard drive question: when you say ' Competing notebooks offer two internal hard drives', do you mean that other notebooks have options for two hard drives out of the box, unlike this Sager? Or does it mean this laptop has only one hard drive bay, unable to accommodate two internal hard drives?

Thanks and great review!

 

I'm wondering... This laptop does sound like a really powerful unit to me too. But given it's intended purpose, is there anything else on the market that would provide the same grunt, with less fan noise, better keyboard and with an HDMI out? Just curious, cuz I want 1!

(my np5790 was a bit loud on the fans, and the dvd drive was fairly flimsy, but I loved my laptop anyway )

 

Could we get the exact weight of this laptop including the power supply? While it would be ideal for me, I feel anything over 10 pounds might become quite a load for moving around frequently.

Thanks.

 

This laptop is sounding better and better. Especially after reading this review.

 

Like I said, I agree the hard drive temperature is high. It seems to stay in the high 40s most of the time though, that HDTune screenshot was done after running benchmarks which did stress the hard drive quite a bit.

The HP dv9700t, Toshiba X205, and Dell 1720 are 17" notebooks and all offer two internal hard drives. The Sager NP5793 can only take one internal hard drive - it has only one internal bay. It's not a big deal, really, and with 500GB hard drives for notebooks coming out soon, it's even less of one.

You could take a look at the Alienware Area-51 m15x, but it's not as powerful as this since you can overclock the NP5793's Extreme processor. In the Alienware you can't.

The weight of the laptop itself with the battery is 8.35 lbs, I estimate the power adapter is another 1 lb so it is barely under 10. Getting a backpack would be helpful with this notebook, as shoulder bags could be uncomfortable. It all depends on the person.

 

True, and only 15" too. but check out the glowing keyboard! Impulse buy! I don't think I could afford the extreme processor unfortunately.

 

Yeah but the 15" is good for some people, like if you don't want something as heavy

 

Great notebook! Great review! Only wish I could afford the X9000 :/

 

sager makes good laptops!

 

Just got mine in the mail the other day. I don't remember being this gitty about a toy in a long time.

I ordered it with the 8700GT as I am not much of a gamer. I purchased it for the elligent 1920x1200 screen, it's speed, it's rugged frame, and unbelievable price. It;s priority for me is video editing. Can anyone shed some light about how this machine will perform under vigorous video editing pressures? I selected the T9300 as it matched my priceing window the best. The OS will be XP Black milestone edition. ha, just for fun I researched what it would cost to have the exact components that I ordered in my 5793 but in a Macbook Pro... Oh My Gosh... about $4000 before taxes. ha, I honestly believe that the 5793 looks sharper too.

Does anyone else have xp black on their Sager or laptop in general? If so, any comments?

The new X9000 chip can now be purchased from xoticpc (where I got mine) for an extra 740 YIKES.

Thanks to everyone who's added to this topic. It's been a great read!

 

Oh yeah, I've ordered my Sager NP5793 with the 8800GTX, X9000 CPU, 4gig ram, 200 gig (7200rpm) HDD, WUXGA Gloss Screen, Robson Turbo Memory and XP Pro (I'll be upgrading to Vista later so I've prepped it in anticipation).

This thing will eat many PC's alive! ha!

Although I have really missed my stolen laptop over the last month or so, I've certainly made up for it by upgrading to a much better spec this time round. The effort I've expended to make the claim was minimal but the effect it had on my productivity overall has been marked.

I'll be keeping this one with me at all times. What's with having a portable item stolen from my home anyway?

If it was going to be stolen I expected it to be stolen from work or in transit or something similar.

anyway, new locks, video cams and lazer beams now.

Really looking forward to this new model

 

Congratulations, you made an excellent choice going with Sager.

Definitely buy a lock for your new laptop, it's not a guarantee your laptop won't be stolen but sure is a turn-off for those looking. I have a Targs DEFCON lock for my Sager, it's sturdy.

 

im getting one soon too just trying to get the money, hey by the way do you know of any good resailers in australia

 

Dude, good to see a fellow Demonoid user... I remember working on XP Black with her... good stuff...

good stuff that is not such a hot idea to discuss here though. PM me is you want my email address, I would be happy to help get that OS on your Sager if it won't work... you will have to prove to me that you have a Legitimate XP License though... Black was great (and the Indigo Update is better) but...

well... you know...

 

I'm thinking of a Sager 5793, but the fan noise bothers me... could you elaborate on the noise factor?

If I was to study in a library, would it be loud to the point of being disruptive? As in, could you hear the fan noise from, say, 15 feet away (obviously if I was studying I would not need the fans going full tilt.. it'd just be Firefox and maybe some Office apps, Itunes and maybe the GIMP. No movies or games.

Sorry if I sound overly persistent or annoying, just want to be sure. Its too much money to spend for a laptop thats not right for me.

 

Great review!

 

it seems that the fans have recieved a firmware update to reduce the noise. can anyone say how much of a reduction it is?

 

there is a major thread of it in the Sager/Clevo forum.

search there.

And yes, it has pretty much eliminated the noise issue.